The Musician's Pianist

By

Patrick J. Smith

Updated Feb. 1, 1999 12:01 a.m. ET

A merican classical music has produced many superior performers, both instrumentalists and conductors, who are renowned world-wide, yet there are as numerous examples of those who -- through one fault or another -- never fully attain the level that was destined for them. None of these examples is more regrettable than the truncated career of the pianist William Kapell, who died at age 31.